Overclocking i5-3570k

Hey,

So anyway I decided to start attempting to overclock my i5 this evening after reading around over the past week or so about the best way of going about things. Atm I've currently got it running at 4.4 GHz at 1.224V, with the temperatures sitting around 66-70 degrees C using the FFT torture test on prime 95. I did try 4.5GHz but just couldn't get it stable, with prime95 crashing so I decided to tune it down a bit. My pc specs are in my sig, I was just wondering if any of you experienced overclockers have any advice/tips to help me achieve the most stable overclock.

Thanks for the link, I'll definitely take a more in depth look at it tomorrow. I've just tried lowering the voltage down to 1.23 in the bios but I got a BSOD after about 3 mins of running prime. Back up to 1.24V in the BIOS (although CPU-Z only says 1.224V?) and its been running at the same temps as mentioned above (65-70 across the 4 cores) for about 10 minutes so far. Don't have time to do a longer stress test tonight as I've gotta be up tomorrow but would be nice if someone could comment on 4.4GHz at 1.24(1.224?) being a decent overclock?

EDIT: When I stop running prime CPU-Z shows the voltage to be 1.248. Why does it lower to 1.224 when I actually run the stress test? Might be a stupid question but being new I'm still feeling my way around these things haha.

EDIT: When I stop running prime CPU-Z shows the voltage to be 1.248. Why does it lower to 1.224 when I actually run the stress test? Might be a stupid question but being new I'm still feeling my way around these things haha.

Load Line Calibration (LLC). When the chip switches from idle to running, there is a drop in the amount of voltage supplied to the chip. LLC tries to compensate by throwing in a little extra votlage to keep it steady, but quite often it overcompensates a bit and pushes the voltage higher during idles.

Best advice is to keep LLC values low-medium (but don't turn it off), Asus boards give a range of LLC options. If you've already done that then don't worry about it the small voltage fluctuations between idle/load states.

Thanks for the reply. I've been playing around with the LLC settings a bit and I've got a few questions about it. The guide I was using (Republic of Gamers guide) said to start of on extreme/high LLC at 1.25V just to check that the chip could run 4.5/4.4, and then steadily lower it down from there. When running prime last night on 1.23V @ medium LLC it didn't seem very stable, although I'm going to try the same thing again and see what happens.

Don't know if I've misunderstood this but as you said " keep LLC values low-medium ", if I leave it on medium for example, should I just increase the CPU voltage to increase stability and just not touch the LLC?

This is what i watched to learn how to overclock mine, He gets his i5-3570k to 4.5k but i personally wouldnt recommend that high, mines at 4.2 and i sit under 40C while doing everything i need to do, But i also dont have a stock CPU fan

Oh ya and in the video (I think its that one) he gives links that are really helpful, Ones a stress test, Ones a Temp Monitor, and Others information on CPU like voltage, Speed its set at and such to make sure settings are correct.